My COMMENT at Economist's View and DeLong:

 
Re: Which Thinkers Will Define Our Future? - J. Bradford DeLong
Re: The Anger Wave That May Just Wipe Out Laissez-Faire Economics - NYTimes

Karl Marx said America doesn't need socialism because it had labor unions. Opps! (Where'd they go?)

NYT writer does usual analysis of what-to-do-next w/o any mention of re-unionizing our labor force -- w/o realizing that de-unionizing is the source of almost all our other troubles.

Today's progressive thinkers (don't know about Keynes, et al) all seem to miss that only re-balancing the average persons' economic bargaining power and political power via re-creating high labor union density can re-constitute a health society.

My future-defining thinker might be Jimmy Hoffa. :-)

But as long as nobody talks about re-unionization (as the beginning and the end of re-constituting the American dream) -- nobody thinks it is possible to talk about ...
... or something.

Easy as pie to make union busting a felony in our most progressive states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, NY, MD) -- and then get out of the way as the first 2000 people in the many telephone directories re-define our future.


My  COMMENT at Noahpinion:

Re:  Some stuff economists tend to leave out

A hidden dimension in prime-age, non-college educated male labor market drop-out -- usually left out?

"The Crips and the Bloods" and my gang, American raised (former) taxi drivers, would enthusiastically work for $200 a week -- one hundred years ago when it would have been understood that that was the best a, then, much less productive economy could pay low skilled labor: the best in history, indoor plumbing, etc.

They, we, won't work for $400 a week today.  $800, yes.

The money is there.  The min wage was $440 in 1968 at half today's per capita.  $600 a week would transfer 5% of income from the 55% who now take 90% to the 45% -- not counting push-ups.  Push-ups: supermarkets pre-Walmart used to pay $800.

Beautiful thing about collective bargaining is that (in the US make that "would be that") labor feels it has squeezed the most out of the consumer for the era it habitates -- and subjectively on top of the world.